


since we've no place to go

by ThunderstormsandMemories



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-02-28 23:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13281813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderstormsandMemories/pseuds/ThunderstormsandMemories
Summary: in which Rilla, Arum, and Damien reflect on their relationship and share a moment of warmth in the middle of winter





	since we've no place to go

**Author's Note:**

> written for the Penumbra Holiday Exchange 2017, for @cartograffiti on tumblr, who asked for arum/damien/rilla and "queer people being sweet to each other" so here they are, being generally loving and supportive and cozy, I hope you like it!!!

The nights Rilla liked best were when they stayed home. To be sure, she liked adventuring as much as the next scientific-minded herbalist, but it was nice, at the end of the day, to settle down at your own work table and grind up herbs with your own well-worn mortar and pestle, a fire crackling cheerfully in the hearth and someone who loved you working on their own project nearby, enjoying each other’s company and resting from the day at the same time. That was life with Damien: married life, though she’d never really expected to enjoy marriage, or even get married at all until she realized how serious her feelings for him were. But it was a good life, comfortable and intimate, and he didn’t mind when her experiments spilled out from her work bench to the kitchen table, and she didn’t mind when he asked her to critique the same line of poetry a dozen times with only the most minor changes in between. This had become even more frequent now that he had fallen in love with two people, and seemed to be constantly poems about both of them. He refused to let her hear any poems about her until they were finished, but he had a few about the Queen in the works, and even more about Arum. But still, it was sweet of him, and really, he was rather good once he stopped worrying so much about whether or not each word was perfect. So she praised her favorites and politely didn’t say anything about the ones that were too overwrought or nonsensical, and he kept writing away in the other room while she worked on preserving the plants she’d brought in before the snows had started to fall.

“Rilla, my darling, light of my life,” he said, and at least now he didn’t get up every time he wanted to ask her something, so maybe now his twisted ankle would finally mend, “I need your expertise. What are some flowers that are purple?”

“Violets?” she suggested, pausing in the process of hanging another bundle of dried basil above her desk.

“I already used that,” said Damien. “Of course I did. What other more apt comparison is there for Arum’s eyes?”

“Jewels?” she said. “Amethyst, perhaps?”

“No, that’s overdone,” said Damien. “And I wanted to stick with flowers, since I already have such lovely plant symbolism going.”

“What about lavender?” Rilla said. “Or iris? Or maybe lupine, but so many of those are blue that the metaphor might get confused.”

“Thank you, dearest. Lavender will do perfectly.”

“Anytime,” she said. “And how’s your leg?”

“Oh, fine,” said Damien. “I can hardly feel the pain anymore, I think I might even be able to go-”

“No,” said Rilla sternly, before he could finish. “You can hardly feel the pain because there is enough numbing agent in that poultice to knock out a horse, and if you try to go out to report for duty I will sit on you.”

In the attempt to keep him from trying to go out on patrol, despite his leg and the storm and the fact that Sir Caroline specifically ordered him to stay home until he healed, she made another cup of his favorite tea- lavender and chamomile and honey- and moved the poisonous plants off the kitchen table so that they could make dinner. She’d also invited Arum over, because six arms were better than two when it came to making Damien relax, and also because it was a particularly cold and dark winter’s night, and she thought he might appreciate the company.

 ---

Arum made his way through the woods, turning up the hood of his cloak against the wind, muttering a stream of curses under his breath each time he misstepped in the deepening snow. It was too damn cold, and these were his woods, so how dare the snow come along every year to make them unfamiliar and hostile to him. At least this year he had somewhere warm to go, when the cold was at its harshest, instead of watching the smoke rise from chimneys of human buildings huddled together at the edge of the trees, thinking bitter thoughts

Instead he was thinking about how strange humans are, how soft and fragile and warm and loving, and how strange it was to return somewhere and have a candle already lit in the window and the smell of wood smoke guiding him back- and he had never expected this, hadn’t been looking for it. Damien was just someone in his way, until he looked at his eyes and then he was something else entirely, but he’d never expected that to go anywhere. He didn’t have the same misgivings Damien did- he wasn’t already engaged, for one, and monsters tended to care less about seemingly arbitrary human distinctions- but still. A human and a monster. Not something that should have been on the table, no matter how sweet the human’s eyes were or how enchanting his words. And he really hadn’t expected Rilla, had dismissed her as another meddling human only to be quickly blown away by her wit and her strong spirit and her lack of tolerance for bullshit. Somehow, without him noticing or intending to, he had started to think of their cottage by the edge of the woods as a safe place, somewhere he belonged too, almost like a home. And when he knocked, two familiar voices shouted “Come in,” at the same time, and he stepped into the light and the warmth.

“Don’t let the snow in,” said Rilla, her back to him, huddled over her worktable. “It’s bad for the orchids.”

“Not to mention for us,” said Damien, calling from one of the back rooms, “especially those of us who are cold-blooded. Arum, darling, you must be half-frozen.” It was unusual for him to not greet Arum at the door, but once he made his way back to the sitting room he saw why. His foot was bandaged and propped up on the coffee table, and strewn around him were pages full of his cramped, elegant handwriting. His fingers were blotted with ink, and there was a smudge on the handle of the steaming teacup that was set carefully on the floor next to the couch.

“Hello, honeysuckle,” Arum said, mostly because every time he said it Damien acted as flustered as though he’d never said it before, and did that weird human thing where his cheeks went red and his heart fluttered faster in his chest. Blushing, that was what it was called. Arum thought it was impractical- why couldn’t they have sensible physical tells of attraction like flaring their neck frills or baring their teeth- but also incredibly endearing.

“Hello, Arum, my love,” Damien said. “Why don’t you sit down and- well, you’ll have to clear some space first but there should be enough room for both of us, and it’s nice and warm by the fire.”

“In a moment,” he said. “It would be rude of me to not greet Rilla as well.”

“Tell her to join us,” he said. “She shouldn’t be working so late all the time.”

“I can hear you, Damien,” said Rilla, and Arum laughed, pressing a kiss to Damien’s forehead, or as close to a kiss as he could manage without human lips. Lizard courtship rituals relied much more on the teeth than human ones, he’d found, and although humans, or at least his humans, appreciated him using his teeth in certain situations, casual greetings were not one of those situations. He repeated the same almost-kiss with Rilla, who kissed him on the cheek in return, and said, “Welcome, Lord Arum. Glad you made it through the storm in one piece.”

“Of course I did,” said Arum, though there had been moments when he’d begun to worry that the cold would force him to turn back. “But I appreciate your concern."

 ---

Damien felt calm, which was such a strange feeling that he almost started worrying about what he should have been worrying about but wasn’t. He took a deep breath, and another sip of hot tea, using the mug to warm his hands for a moment, and reminded himself that sometimes there really was nothing wrong. And then he surprised himself by realizing that he believed that.

He hadn’t always, and he had too-frequent days when he still didn’t, but all the same, it was nice to have this moment when he could remember that in spite of everything that had gone wrong and could go wrong, there were so many things in his life that went right.

He was knight of the Second Citadel, and proud to serve his Queen, and he had friends and rivals who were really more like friends anyway and a wife and a lover who was also his wife’s lover, and so many people, so many people he trusted, couldn’t have possibly all been mistaken to see something in him. Knowing all this didn’t stop his frantic thoughts from racing out of control, or prevent him from feeling the way he did sometimes, when his throat would tighten and his hands would shake and his breathing would get fast and shallow and all he could think of were a thousand new ways for the situation to get worse-

But it was easier to pick up the pieces of himself afterwards if he wasn’t alone, and it was harder to convince himself that no one loved him when he had Rilla on one side and Arum on the other, her hand around his shoulders, their ankles twined together-carefully, to avoid jostling his injury- and Arum’s head resting against his own, his hands holding Damien’s and running through Rilla’s hair and on Damien’s thigh, and Damien felt warm and content and loved.

The wind was howling outside, tree branches swaying and creaking and occasionally thumping against the walls of their house, snow swirling up and obscuring the view out the windows. But the fire was crackling merrily away, and the sitting room was cozy with the smells of Rilla’s herbs and steeping tea and the curious wild scent of Arum’s scales. He pressed a kiss to the side of Rilla’s head and then set about dozing off with his head resting on Arum’s shoulder, only to be jolted back to consciousness by the low rumble of Arum’s voice, felt rather than heard, as he said, “Thank you for letting me wait out the storm here. It sounds like it’s going to last longer than I thought.”

“As houseguests go,” Rilla said, “you’re by far the most considerate we’ve ever had. To be fair, usually our only houseguest is Sir Angelo, who knocks over more furniture the more he tries to stay out of the way.” Arum laughed at that, his tongue flicking briefly out of his mouth.

“Angelo isn’t our only houseguest,” Damien said. “Sir Talfryn was here just last week. Please, dearest, you’ll make us look antisocial in front of royalty.”

“I don’t think someone who lives alone in the deepest part of the forest is going to think we’re antisocial, Damien,” Rilla said. “And besides, Sir Talfryn is a perfectly lovely houseguest who’s only ever knocked over my work table once.”

There was a moment in which Damien considered trying to argue that Arum had never knocked anything over in their house, which was empirically untrue, but he had never knocked anything over while he’d been there as a guest, which probably made some sort of difference, but either way it was irrelevant to the point he was trying to make, which was: “We really don’t might having you stay, you know. Even if it is for a long time. We have enough space, and we enjoy your company.” Rilla snorted and raised an eyebrow at that, but Damien hadn’t meant it as an innuendo, even if the second meaning was also true, and so he ignored her. “And I know you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, even if you are a cold-blooded being in the middle of winter, but sometimes I still do worry.”  
“Well,” Arum said, “I wouldn’t want my knight to be worried about me.”

“Of course not,” Rilla said, “or your herbalist, who reminds you of how horribly dry and cracked your scales get when you stay out too long in the cold and forget to use the moisturizing cream I made specifically for you.”

“My scales are always perfect,” said Arum, and if Damien couldn’t feel his chest shaking as he tried to hold back his laughter, he might’ve thought he was offended.

“ _You_ are always perfect, dearest,” said Damien, running one hand down the spikes on the back of Arum’s neck, and Arum half-closed his beautiful bright violet eyes, his breath rumbling low in his chest almost like purring. And Damien, bracketed between him and Rilla, her fingers linked with his, thought there should be poetry about how he felt but found that he heart was too full of warmth to find the words.


End file.
